THE DECLINE OF THE HUNGER STRIKE
The Decline of the Hunger Strike Gandhi turned himself into a ribcage in a loincloth. The IRA's Bobby Sands starved himself for 66 days until he died in a Belfast prison. But hunger-striking, like...
...Meanwhile, there are "at least 9,000 homeless children in Iowa" and "6,000 to 8,000 children have been disqualified from welfare...
...John Porter of Illinois, was embarking on a three-week hunger strike to protest Turkish oppression of the Kurds...
...I think this is an unfortunate event," said Maria Bustillo, a reproductive endocrinologist, on CNN...
...Does the Berkeley city council really feel like making a splash...
...For today's hunger-strikers, it's the thought that counts...
...She recalled that Berkeley was among the first cities to come out against the Vietnam war, and among the first to call for the divestment of American business in South Africa...
...We quote from A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution, by Orlando Figes: "Lenin worked alone in his own compartment, while his fellow travellers, much to his annoyance, drank and sang in the corridor and the other compartments...
...Never mind that this is akin to a celibate monk's escaping to the local bordello once a month for relaxation...
...Cut down to just two meals and two snacks a day—as an ironic homage to protesters of yore...
...I'll put the bullet in this chamber and it won't come up...
...To the Smoke-free Station Those looking for a historical antecedent to America's anti-smoking hysteria should search no farther...
...Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey certainly don't consider themselves unfortunate, but what do they know...
...Sam Donaldson, perhaps taking his cue from Snyderman, weighed in disapprovingly on This Week: The McCaugheys were playing "Russian roulette" with the health of their children, saying, as it were, "I don't care...
...A modest proposal for the next Gandhi wannabe: Announce a "virtual hunger strike...
...It sure didn't take long for the fecundity backlash to set in...
...Does it want to be in the vanguard of revolutionary change...
...Fellow waif Al Sharpton once promised to go without food after being arrested for blocking traffic on behalf of hoaxstress Tawana Brawley...
...I'm glad they're doing well, but I think that in general, we would look at this, those of us who do this for a living, as kind of failure of our technology...
...It seemed from this piece of minor social planning that Lenin was already preparing himself to 'assume the leadership of the revolutionary government.' The 'sealed train' was an early model of Lenin's state dictatorship...
...Jackson calls this "passing the cross" down "the chain of suffering...
...The harsh glare of Lenin's example at last illuminates the shadowy motives of our anti-smoking zealots: Today tobacco—tomorrow the world...
...As Nancy Snyderman, ABC medical correspondent, explained it on Good Morning America: "Now, I know it's an unsavory thought for a lot of people, but selective abortion, where you literally think about not which fetuses to get rid of but how many to get rid of, is something that we really need to talk about openly in cases like this...
...Likewise, NBA center Olden Polynice, also protesting the detainment of HIV-infected Haitian immigrants, vowed a hunger strike that would allow him to eat only on game days...
...The McCaugheys, who oppose abortion, said "No thank you" and took their chances...
...Three Cheers for Seven McCaugheys The arrival of the McCaughey septuplets in Iowa last week looked like the ultimate good-news story, and the TV reporters covered it that way at first...
...Shame on Iowa governor Terry Branstad, Jones argued, for pulling together private support to build the McCaugheys a new house...
...public compassion and responsibility are bad...
...After refusing solids on behalf of Haitian immigrants or California grape workers, Jackson then allows somebody else—somebody as hungry for publicity as Jackson is for food—to take over his fast...
...Is there a smoker in America today who doesn't feel as though he's been issued a "second-class pass...
...Fortunately, Cokie Roberts jumped in and silenced Donaldson before he could injure any bystanders with his metaphor, pointing out that "this is a eugenics argument...
...By the canons of modern medical expertise, they are grossly irresponsible: After the fertility drugs succeeded beyond expectation, you see, they should have preemptively killed several of their unborn babies...
...I am sure last night's vote against sanctions in Iraq will be another of those times...
...Porter is well within the bounds of recent practice...
...But celebrating the birth of lots of apparently healthy children, against enormous odds, to happy and relieved parents is apparently de trop in America's newsrooms...
...After all, it's the sanctimony that counts...
...In our heartless country, "Private compassion is good...
...Well, Bay Area Castroite Ron Dellums is retiring from Congress this year...
...Then once a week call a press conference at which you release computer-generated simulations of what you would look like if you had actually stopped eating...
...It may have begun as so many of our century's tragedies began: with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's train ride from Zurich to the Finland Station in Petrograd, where he launched the Bolshevik Revolution...
...The connection...
...Smoking was confined to the lavatory and Lenin ordered that all non-smokers should be issued with a 'first class' pass that gave them priority to use the lavatory over the smokers with their 'second class' passes...
...Last month, it voted 7 to 0 with two abstentions to lift sanctions against Iraq...
...And Mrs...
...That lasted until his team got a five-day rest...
...The director of the Middle East Children's Alliance, Barbara Lubin, was sanguine about this development...
...Jesse Jackson, who's been known to call hunger strikes one day and show up at banquets the next, invented tag-team striking a few years back...
...There was, however, a wee, little qualifier: Porter "has been eating one meal a day because she has diabetes...
...But hunger-striking, like other demanding disciplines, isn't what it used to be...
...So much for good news...
...This form of abortion involves the injection of poison into one or more of the siblings...
...Last week, The Hill reported that Kathryn Cameron Porter, wife of Rep...
...The New York Times, for its part, marked the happy occasion with an op-ed from Gene Jones, the director of the Des Moines Coalition for the Homeless, who wrote that the outpouring of gifts to the McCaughey family is an example of the "warped character of American compassion and obligation...
...There Will Always Bea Berkeley You know that we are confronting one of the momentous issues of our time if the Berkeley, Calif., city council weighs in...
...But a jail guard revealed that while Sharpton had taken the unusual measure of skipping several meals, including barbecued chicken, "He told us it's a good time to lose weight...
...But history," Lubin said, "has proved Berkeley right time and again...
...Sure, these causes may have seemed like losers at the time...
...But he's not really on a fast...
...Maybe the council should endorse a Republican...
Vol. 3 • December 1997 • No. 13
